“Well.” Alexia smiled magnanimously around the table. “This all looks lovely. Anna has surpassed herself as usual.”
“As have you, my darling.” Leaning across the mouthwatering spread of roast beef, fresh tomato-and-basil salad, and home-baked bread, Teddy De Vere kissed his wife proudly on the cheek. “Home secretary! My goodness. I expect this means we’ll see even less of you.”
“Hopefully,” Roxie muttered under her breath.
“You know, brown’s really not your shade, darling,” Alexia shot back, looking at Roxie’s drab Next dress. No one was going to ruin this triumph for her, especially not her spoiled, self-centered daughter. “It makes you look like even more of a wet weekend than you usually do. Try a spot of color, next time. It might brighten you up. God knows you could use it.”
Roxie flushed with anger and embarrassment but said nothing.
Eager to avoid further confrontation, Michael De Vere raised his glass.
“Congratulations, Home Secretary!”
Leaning forward, Michael helped himself to a mountain of beef. Bad news should never be broken on an empty stomach.
“Thank you, darling.” Alexia beamed at her son. “You are sweet.”
“Were you surprised they appointed you? I mean, it did come rather out of the blue.”
“Nonsense,” Teddy said loyally. “Your mother was the obvious choice for the job. After all her sterling work with the prison reforms.”
“You’re sweet, darling, but Michael’s quite right. It was a complete shock. I mean, the PM and I do get along well on a personal level . . .”
“Yes, yes. As you’ve told us a thousand times,” sniped Roxie, earning herself twin pleading looks from Teddy and Michael.
“But I never expected a promotion on this scale,” Alexia went on regardless. “I don’t think anybody else did either. It’s ruffled quite a few feathers in the party, I can tell you. But then why be boring and play things by the book? You’ve got to take life’s opportunities where you find them. Grab the bull by the horns and all that. And of course, if I can be of service to the country, then so much the better.”
This was too much for Roxie. She knew she’d promised her father, but really. Service?
“Oh, please, Mother. At least have the decency to admit that this isn’t about service. It’s ambition that got you the job. Personal ambition. We’re not journalists, we’re your family. You don’t have to lie to us, just because you lie to everybody else.”
Teddy said reprovingly, “Roxie, love, steady on.”
Alexia’s chest tightened into a familiar ball of anger. Steady on? Was that all Teddy had to say? Why did he never stick up for her properly? Why did he kowtow to Roxie’s victim complex by treading on eggshells all the damn time? The girl used that damn wheelchair like a weapon, and Alexia for one was sick of it.
“Speaking of taking opportunities and grabbing bulls and . . . things,” Michael began uncertainly. “I, er . . . I have some news.”
“Don’t tell us you’ve finally found a nice girl and are going to get married?” Teddy teased. “I thought we’d agreed. No weddings until you’ve finished Oxford.”
“Don’t worry,” said Michael. “No weddings. At least none where I’m the groom. But I, er . . . well, that’s the news. Part of it, anyway. I have finished Oxford.”
Complete silence. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.
Alexia spoke first.
“What do you mean you’ve finished, Michael? You’ve only just started.”
Michael looked at his mother plaintively. “Uni’s not for me, Mum. Really.”
“Not for you? Why on earth not?”
“Honestly? I’m bored.”
“Bored?” Teddy erupted. “At Balliol? Don’t be ridiculous.”
Michael plowed on. “You remember Kingsmere Events, the company I started last year with Tommy?”
Tommy Lyon was Michael’s oldest friend. The two boys had met at prep school and always remained close.
“Not really.”
“Yes, you do. We threw a thirtieth birthday party for that Russian chap on a yacht in Saint-Tropez last summer?”
“Vaguely.” Alexia looked at Teddy, whose usually jovial features were set like thunder.
“Well, anyway, we made twenty-grand profit from that, just the two of us,” Michael said proudly. “And we’ve had loads of inquiries since then, for corporate events, Bar mitzvahs.”
“Bar mitzvahs!” Teddy De Vere could take no more. “You’re a De Vere, for God’s sake, and you’re halfway through a law degree at Oxford. You can’t seriously expect your mother and I to agree to you throwing all that away to book clowns and balloons for thirteen-year-old Jewish boys from Golders bloody Green!”
“Their parents are the clients,” said Michael reasonably. “And don’t knock Golders Green. Some of these Jewish mothers are dropping half a million on little Samuel’s big day.”
“Half a million? Pounds?” Even Teddy was brought up short by this number.
“Think of the opportunity, Dad.” Michael’s merry gray eyes lit up. “Tommy and I can net eighty, a hundred grand in a night.”
“Yes, and with a first from Balliol and my and your mother’s contacts, you could be making tens of millions a year in the City a few years from now. I’m sorry, Michael, but it’s just not on.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Dad, but it’s not up to you. I formally left college this morning. Gave in my keys and everything.”
“You WHAAAAAAT?” Teddy’s screams could be heard all the way to the Kingsmere gatehouse. Roxie tried to intervene and soon the three of them were shouting over one another like rowdy MPs at Prime Minister’s Question Time.
Alexia De Vere closed her eyes. First bloody Roxie, getting out her violin again and scratching out the same, bitter old tune. And then Michael, dropping this bombshell. So much for my celebration dinner.
It was a relief when Bailey, the butler, tapped her on the shoulder.
“Sorry to interrupt your meal, ma’am. But there’s someone at the gates wanting to see you.”
Alexia looked at her Cartier watch, an anniversary present from Teddy last year. It was past nine o’clock. “It’s rather late for house calls. Who is it?”
“That’s the thing. They wouldn’t give a name and they were acting, you know, erratically. Jennings wasn’t sure what to do.”
Alexia put down her napkin. “All right. I’ll come.”
Alfred Jennings had been the gatekeeper at Kingsmere for almost forty years. At seventy years old, partially deaf, and with a weak heart, he was not much of a security guard. Michael had once described Jennings as being “as fierce as a newborn kitten,” a phrase that Alexia had always thought summed up old Alfred perfectly. Unfortunately, because she was now home secretary, her security was no longer a laughing matter. Her controversial work as prisons minister had earned her a number of enemies, some of them potentially dangerous, others frankly deranged. Sanjay Patel, an Indian man who had taken his own life in Wormwood Scrubs when his sentence was extended, had a particularly vociferous and unpleasant group of supporters. Alexia De Vere didn’t scare easily, but neither could she afford to be cavalier about unexpected “visitors.”
The Kingsmere gatehouse consisted of an office-cum-sitting-room downstairs and a single bedroom and bathroom above. Jennings had made it cozy, his plug-in fake coal fire constantly burning.
“I’m so sorry to have bothered you, ma’am,” he warbled feebly as Alexia came in. “Especially in the middle of dinner. Fella’s gone now.”
“That’s quite all right, Alfred, better safe than sorry. Were the cameras on, by chance?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am.” The old man wheezed, pleased to have gotten something right. “They’s always on nowadays. Mr. De Vere, he’s quite insistent about it. ‘You switch them cameras on now, Mr. Jennings,’ ’e says. They was on all right.”
“Marvelous. Perhaps I could have a look at the tape?”
Dinner was
over. Teddy had stormed off in a huff and Michael and Roxie were alone in the kitchen, making tea.
“Well,” Michael quipped, “that went well, I thought. Dad was his usual calm, rational self.”
“What did you expect?” Roxie said reprovingly. She loved her brother dearly. Everybody loved Michael, with his naughty-little-boy charm, his warmth, his humor. It was impossible not to. But it pained her to see their father so upset. “You know how much Balliol means to Daddy.”
“Yes, but it’s not ‘Daddy’ who has to be there, is it? It’s me.”
“It’s only two more years.”
“I know, Rox, but I’m bored out of my mind. I’m not really a lectures-and-libraries sort of bloke.” Michael slumped down on the table with his head in his hands.
“Really? You don’t say.” Roxie raised a sarcastic eyebrow
“Ha ha. I’m serious. This business with Tommy, I honestly think I can make a go of it. Dad’s an entrepreneur.”
“Hardly.”
“All right, well, he’s a businessman at least. Surely there must be part of him that understands?”
“It’s not that he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t want you to make a mistake, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not. Mum gets it. Even though the press are bound to give her stick about it, she knows I have to find my own way.”
“Alexia thinks the sun shines out of your arse and always has,” Roxie said coldly. “She’d support you if you said you were off to join a Muslim Brotherhood training camp in the Kashmir mountains.”
Michael frowned. He hated it when his sister called their mother by her first name. The rift between mother and daughter was obvious enough, but somehow that little verbal tic seemed to underscore it.
“She loves us both, Rox.”
Roxie rolled her eyes.
“She does.”
“Well, she has a funny way of showing it.”
Teddy found Alexia in her study. Sitting at the desk, an empty water glass in front of her, she was staring into space, twisting her wedding ring around and around on her finger.
“Are you all right?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes. Fine.”
She forced a smile. Beneath the perfectly coiffed, politician exterior, Teddy could see how tired she looked. Alexia had been in her midtwenties when they met and her late twenties when they married, in a small Catholic chapel off Cadogan Street. Back in those days she was a raving beauty in the classic seventies mold. Very slender, with long, coltish legs and a mane of straggly blond hair that streamed behind her like the tail of a comet when she moved. But she was ambitious even then, and she’d changed very quickly, cutting her hair and adopting a more sober, suit-and-heels dress sense when she ran for her first London constituency seat. Mrs. Thatcher had been elected leader a few years before Alexia De Vere became an MP, but the British Conservative Party remained a hostile place for a woman, especially one from a lower-middle-class background. Marriage to a British aristocrat had certainly helped Alexia’s chances. Teddy had relinquished his peerage so that his young wife could have a shot at the Commons, but Alexia remained a De Vere, and De Veres had been part of the Tory establishment since time immemorial.
Teddy wasn’t stupid. He was well aware that his name and his money and his family connections were a big part of the attraction for his brilliant, beautiful, pushy young bride. But he admired Alexia, and he loved her, and he was more than willing to offer up all that he had on the altar of her career. Before they met, Teddy De Vere’s life had been grand, privileged, and deathly dull. Marriage to Alexia Parker had made it an adventure.
Sitting at her desk tonight, Alexia looked every inch the powerful, competent, wildly successful woman that she had become. From her subtle Daniel Galvin highlights, to her immaculately cut couture suit, to the diamonds glinting discreetly at her fingers, ears, and neck, Teddy De Vere’s wife was a woman to be reckoned with. Watching her, Teddy could have burst with pride.
Home secretary. That was quite something.
We did it, my darling. We proved them all wrong.
Of course, the De Veres had had their fair share of trial and of tragedy, both as a couple and as a family. Teddy was intelligent enough to realize that the relationship between Alexia and Roxie would probably never recover, any more than his darling daughter’s shattered legs. It had started so long ago, almost as soon as Roxie entered her teens, but of course that awful business with the Beesley boy had made it a thousand times worse. And Alexia had never been the touchy-feely type, the sort of mother who could give her daughter a hug and say “there, there.” Teddy also knew that Alexia spoiled Michael rotten, partly in compensation for all that she’d lost with Roxanne. It drove him mad sometimes, but he understood. Teddy De Vere prided himself on the fact that he had always understood his wife. They were two sides of the same coin, he and Alexia. He loved her deeply.
“We missed you at dinner.”
“Did you? I couldn’t tell for all the yelling.”
Walking up behind her, Teddy rubbed her shoulders. “I’m sorry things got so heated. Where did you disappear to?”
“Someone was at the gate, asking to see me. Jennings didn’t like the look of them, but by the time I got there, they’d gone.”
Teddy scowled. “I don’t like the way these loonies keep following you around.”
“We don’t know it was a loony. It could have been anyone . . . a constituent, a reporter.”
“Did you get him on tape?”
Alexia didn’t blink. “No. The CCTV was acting up.”
“Again?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“For God’s sake. What is wrong with that damn system? Can’t you get MI5 to keep an eye on things, now that you’re running the bloody country?”
Alexia stood up and kissed him. “Relax, darling. It was nothing. I’m sure I’ll be given all the security I need, but we don’t want to live like prisoners, do we?”
“Well, no.”
“Good, then. Now, about Michael leaving Balliol.”
Teddy held up his hands for silence. Few people could stop Alexia De Vere midsentence, but her husband was one of them. “Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “We are not talking about either of the children anymore tonight. This was supposed to be your night. Let’s go to bed and you can tell me everything about your first day in delicious, minute detail. Home Secretary.” He gave her bottom a playful squeeze.
Alexia laughed. “All right. Bed it is.”
Not for the first time, she thanked her lucky stars that she had such a wonderful, supportive husband.
If only I didn’t have to lie to him.
The CCTV footage was poor quality. But it wasn’t blank.
Tomorrow she would show the tape to Edward Manning.
Edward would know what to do.
Chapter Ten
Sir Edward Manning was excited.
“Put your face on the table, you little bitch.”
Having sex in the House of Lords always turned him on. There was something so deliciously illicit about having his way with the pliable, young serving staff in such an ancient, august setting. Tonight’s twenty-year-old Romanian had been particularly accommodating, locking the door and stripping off to order as soon as the dinner was finished and the dull Chinese diplomatic party had returned to the embassy.
“Spread your legs.”
Fine Waterford crystal wine goblets etched with House of Lords shook perilously on the table as it rocked back and forth. Sir Edward Manning, his trousers around his ankles but his black tie still perfect, thrust harder and faster till wet patches appeared through his starched dress shirt.
“Not so rough, Edward, please! It hurts.”
“ ‘Sir Edward’ to you, my dear. And I want it to hurt. That’s the whole point.”
Pushing the young Romanian farther onto the table, Edward hoisted himself up onto the polished wood, squatting over his lover like a toad as he forced himself inside the deliciously soft, twent
y-year-old body. Sir Edward Manning didn’t pine for his own youth, but he still appreciated the delights of youthful flesh, especially when it was so freely offered. A crystal goblet fell and shattered loudly on the parquet floor. Then another. Sir Edward quickened his pace. It was one in the morning and the door was locked, but they didn’t want to be disturbed.
At last, with a stifled cry of pleasure, he came, liberally spilling semen all over the Romanian’s smooth bare buttocks before sliding off onto the floor. Pulling up his trousers and straightening his hair, he admired his conquest, still spread-eagled on the table.
“Don’t worry about sweeping up the mess, Sergei. The stewards will do it in the morning.”
Sergei Milescu turned and looked up at the old man he’d just serviced. Sergei Milescu hated Sir Edward Manning with a burning, murderous intensity. But he hated himself more for the huge erection between his legs. The things the Englishman did to him were disgusting and painful and shaming. But Sergei had come to enjoy them almost as much as his abuser did.
Not that he was with Sir Edward Manning for the sex. Manning was a powerful man with powerful contacts. He was also wealthy, wealthy beyond Sergei Milescu’s wildest dreams. One day Manning would pay for the humiliation he’d inflicted on Sergei over the last six months, for the bruises and tears to his body that would never fully heal.
“Come here.”
Sir Edward Manning stroked his hair, petting him like a dog, his bony, old man’s fingers tracing languid lines along Sergei’s smooth cheeks.
“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
Sergei nodded. “You know I did. But must it always be in here, where I work? Can’t we go to your place sometimes? I feel like such a . . .”
“Such a what?” Sir Edward purred, his hand reaching down for the boy’s rock-hard cock.